Workaround for using IIS 7 url authorization with ASP.NET roles

When using the IIS 7.0 Integrated pipeline, you gain access to a ton of cool scenarios where IIS and ASP.NET features work together to provide value for your application – regardless of the application content. Most of these features involve using ASP.NET features (e.g.Forms Authentication) to provide their services for non-ASP.NET content.  These have been … [Read more…]

Fun with file locking

If you are developing code that uses distributed synchronization or messaging, you sometimes might need to use files as a locking mechanism.  This can be useful because files are persistent (beyond thread, process, or even power session lifetime), and access to them is synchronized between multiple processes if you select the proper file access and … [Read more…]

Analyzing server power consumption and costs

Server power consumption is rapidly becoming a hot topic in the IT industry.  For many data centers, the cost of powering servers has become a top budget item.  In fact, in 2008, the average cost of power used by a server exceeded its purchase price (1). Nationally, the EPA estimated data center electricity consumption to … [Read more…]

IIS 7.0 Url Rewriter gotchas when importing mod_rewrite rules

One of the best things to happen to IIS 7.0 recently is the release of Url Rewriter, the IIS 7.0 url rewriting equivalent to Apache’s mod_rewrite. To ease the process of migrating Apache apps (notably PHP applications that rely on mod_rewrite rules for SEF / friendly urls), the Url Rewriter IIS Manager snapin includes an … [Read more…]

IIS 7.0 Forms Authentication and Embedded Media Players

One of the useful benefits of IIS 7.0 and the ASP.NET Integrated mode is the ability to protect all content using ASP.NET Forms Authentication.  In the past, people would often protect the application pages themselves, and leave images and media content open for public access.  It wasn’t easy to extend the same internet-based authentication scheme … [Read more…]